


Crime Pays, But Not Enough

by WriteItOtt



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angels and Demons and Mobsters, Angst and Humor, Aziraphale is a Little Shit (Good Omens), BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Kids (Good Omens), Crowley keeps forgetting Aziraphale is a little shit, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Inspired By Tumblr, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mostly Ineffable Idiots Dancing Around Each Other, Mutual Pining, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Slow Burn, Smitten Aziraphale (Good Omens), Soft Crowley (Good Omens), Swooning Crowley, fluff and eventual smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:35:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24003691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriteItOtt/pseuds/WriteItOtt
Summary: A.Z. Fell & Co has been prime real estate since it opened, a fact that many people - and some 'organizations' - have been acutely aware of for just as long. Through the 200 years of running his business, Aziraphale has handled the various offers and occasional threats to buy out (or worse) his shop from him with little to no need to involve anyone else, even his dearest friend Crowley.When a new gang shows up in SoHo determined to succeed where all others have failed, will Aziraphale be able to keep his clean sheet in dealing with the louts by himself? Or will he finally need the help of his friendly neighborhood demonic serpent? And - most importantly - will it finally be enough of a push to stop the 6000 years of mutual pining between the idiots?
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 120





	1. Angelic Tempers and Snaking Around

**Author's Note:**

> There's some instances of homophobic language from the mobsters POV in this work but I will ALWAYS tag it here and in the actual tags so you can skip it if you don't want to or can't read that kind of thing. As a queer agender individual with PTSD myself, the last thing I want to do is trigger someone else with my work. I see you, I understand, I love you. <3
> 
> TW: Mild Homophobic language, use of slurs. Please skip the italicized section if you don't wish to read that.

_It started with the damn Cockneys._

_Nuthin’ drastic, just an enforcer here and there. Far as anyone knew it was always a regular sorta day when it happened. They’d go over to the avenue and collect from their girls, make some visits to collect security from a few shops, then maybe go have a pint at the pub, check with the local bookmaker to see how many more heads needs cracked that day… the usual, with that lot. Maybe they’d see their bookie, maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they skipped the pub, maybe they didn’t. Lookin’ back now, there doesn’t seem to be a pattern between the incidents._

_Then it started happening with the Albanians, too. And the Cosa Nostra. Then the Yardies, the Triads, and the Russians. Pretty soon, nobody wanted to claim the damn place. ‘Fuck it,’ they says, ‘SoHo just ain’t worth the goons ya ended up losing over it.’_

_When Boss took over though? We was sure we could handle it. It was just Soho, right? What were a buncha queers and ‘mos gonna do to us? Put glitter in their protection money? Oh boy, how would we ever get over it?_

_Yeah, well. Turns out SoHo’s got a guardian angel._

_Or a bloody demon._

_Still dunno which it is. But I sure as fuck ain’t goin’ back to ask neither._

* * *

“ **Crowley**! What have I told you about scaring off my customers like that?!” Aziraphale huffed, his rounded cheeks tinged red with annoyance as he glared daggers at the snake sprawled atop the bookshelf behind the till.

The customer in question had been perusing the sealed case of Oscar Wilde first editions deeper in the stacks until something - and Aziraphale was 1000% sure he knew exactly which _something_ it was - had scared the man so badly he screamed in 3 different octaves before stumbling to the front of the store, stammering a mostly-nonsensical apology to the angel behind the till, and running terrified down the street away from the shop at top speed. Aziraphale was obviously not about to sell any of those particular books, and none at all if he could help it, however, he was Quite Sure the poor man was Traumatized with a capital ‘T’ from whatever Crowley had done to him and the angel had a strict policy about actually causing harm to humans. In short, Crowley most certainly knew better and he **certainly** knew better than to do it in Aziraphale’s shop.

“That if I’m going to do something, give it my all?” the snake quipped back lazily, his rasping voice muffled slightly by the several coils of himself laying over his head.

The air pressure in the shop plummeted suddenly and the temperature dropped like a stone. The snake’s head shot up through the middle of its sleekly-coiled body and hissed as if someone had tossed a bucket of ice over it… until his eyes took in Aziraphale’s rapidly darkening countenance. The serpent’s mouth snapped shut with an audible _smack_ and suddenly a lanky ginger-haired man with dark glasses sprawled across the bookshelf instead of the glossy black and red snake. Human form was definitely the way to go forward here, Crowley reasoned. He hadn’t meant to make his friend angry, of course, but here they were… And Aziraphale could be more than a little formidable when he was properly motivated, and right now the angel looked downright livid “A-angel?” the demon ventured.

Aziraphale was having none of it, however. The demon’s blase attitude in the face of his very real and very reasonable annoyance had been the last straw, so to speak, and now the angel was angry. “Don’t give me that now that you realize you’ve made me angry, _Anthony_ ,” he snapped, barely even noticing Crowley’s flinch at the use of his first name. “It isn’t a joking matter at all, and I do _not_ appreciate you treating it as such! Did you see that poor man? Don’t even _try_ to tell me he wasn’t harmed,” Aziraphale cut Crowley off when the demon’s mouth opened to defend himself, “I could feel it as he ran, _literally screaming_ , out of here!”

Crowley was hard-pressed to argue with Aziraphale’s points. Technically, he had done all of those things, yes. But what the fuming (no, literally; there were tendrils of steam curling up from his blond head in the now-chilly shop) angel didn’t know was WHY Crowley had done them. The redhead sighed and slid gracefully to the floor in front of the blond. He held his empty palms up in the universally acknowledged gesture of ‘ok, just let me explain’ (or was it the gesture for ‘I’m unarmed and mean peace’?) and looked over the top of his glasses at Aziraphale.

“Okay. You’re right, Aziraphale,” he stated simply. Everything about Crowley from his tone of voice to his body language telegraphed his sincerity, but the demon wanted to spell it out himself in case it still wasn’t clear. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking at you when I answered back like that, so I didn’t realize you were actually upset or I never would have provoked you, angel. I never meant to make you angry and I’m really sorry that I did.” He paused a moment to catch his breath and gauge Aziraphale’s reaction before deciding that soldiering on with the rest of what he had to say was probably the better idea. “Can we sit down and I’ll explain why I did what I did to the man? Please?”

Crowley’s simple admission was all that was necessary to assuage Aziraphale’s anger so by the time his redheaded menace of a best friend was finished with his entire heartfelt apology, there was an indulgent smile tugging at the corners of the angel’s pink mouth and all trace of his angelic wrath had dissipated as if it hadn't ever been there to begin with. “Of course, Crowley. Thank you, my dear boy,” Aziraphale smiled, taking Crowley’s hand and giving it a tender squeeze as they made their way to the couch.

“You know you scare the Heaven outta me when you actually call me ‘Anthony’,” Crowley chuckled, still a bit uneasy from the sudden confrontation. “You **never** call me Anthony unless I’m in trouble. And even then it’s only if I’m, ya know, _actually_ in trouble and you’re not just having a go at me.”

Aziraphale’s smile took on a rueful edge and he squeezed the demon's hand softly. “I’m sorry, dear, but you really did make me quite upset. I didn’t mean to - well, that’s not true; I did mean to scare you,” he said, throwing a smug little grin over his shoulder as he turned to take his usual armchair next to Crowley's couch.

Crowley couldn’t help but laugh. “You really are a bastard sometimes, angel, you do know that, yeah?”

“Of course I know that, my dear; you remind me of it every time we’re together,” he grinned back. They shared a rather tender few moments of smiles and a look that anyone observing the pair would have clearly pegged as ‘loving’ before Aziraphale looked away to miracle them both a cup of tea. “Now, dear. Why on Earth did you terrify that poor man so?”

Crowley settled back on the couch with a sigh and tossed his glasses on the table between them. “Because he wasn’t a customer, angel,” he explained gently. “He was casing the place. Specifically, he was checking out how many valuable first editions were in that display case and if there were any alarms on it.”

Whatever Aziraphale had been expecting his friend’s answer to be, it hadn’t been that. His jaw dropped open - quite reminiscent of when he had been double-crossed by that Nazi ‘Rose’ in 1941, come to think of it - and he nearly spilled his tea all down his front in his surprise. Understanding dawned hot on the heels of the initial shock, however, and the blond’s expression softened as he met Crowley’s gaze. “And, being a demon, you could feel his nefarious intent and… associated emotions,” Aziraphale worked out quietly. “And you, of course, acted with my and the shop’s best intentions. Oh, I’m such a fool!” he finished with an embarrassed blush. “Crowley, my dear, please forgive the awful way I yelled at you. I should have known there was a good reason…”

Crowley smiled tenderly at his angel and leaned forward to place a comforting hand on Aziraphale’s knee before the angel could get too far gone on his self-deprecating crusade. Aziraphale’s hand came down to cover Crowley’s almost immediately. “Of course I forgive you, Aziraphale. That’s why I asked to have a chat about it; it’s over and done with. Nothing to worry yourself into a tizzy over, angel,” he teased lightly, giving the blond’s knee a gentle squeeze. “Drink your tea before it goes cold and we’ll figure out how to increase the shop security. I can’t be here snaking around the place all the time, you know.”

Aziraphale laughed and squeezed Crowley’s hand where it rested on the angel’s knee. “Oh, I don’t know. I think it’d be lovely to have you here more, my dear boy, but I’m also certain I would get nothing done with you ‘snaking around’, as you say…” 

A bright red flush crept up the demon’s chest, followed the lean length of his neck, and tinged his entire face the color of a perfectly ripened tomato in a matter of seconds. It was rather impressive, in fact. Not really for a demon, of course, but Crowley wasn’t going to focus on semantics when his angel was rather blatantly flirting with him… “Uhhhm. Mm… wot?”

It was a battle that was very nearly lost, but **somehow** Aziraphale managed not to laugh at Crowley’s reaction; it was just too damn adorable. He loved when the demon was flustered. Taking mercy on the redhead as penance for his earlier temper, Aziraphale simply patted Crowley’s hand before pulling his own back to sip his tea. “I suppose I should increase security measures the human way if these mobsters are truly going to insist on escalating matters like this. I mean, really; sending a thief to case the shop? How gauche,” the angel sneered with a curl of his lip.

“ _Mobsters_?! Now wait just a bloody minute here, angel!” Crowley sputtered, embarrassment temporarily overcome by indignation. “You told me you had ‘taken care’ of the louts that had been giving you trouble! What d’you mean, mobsters?” The redhead was absolutely certain that, had he been human, he would've had at least one heart attack already today from the emotional roller coaster Aziraphale had had him on and probably was beginning to edge into another cardiac episode now as well. Bloody angel... 

Aziraphale heaved a rather put-upon sigh at his friend’s dramatics and placed his teacup on the table primly. “Crowley, I _did_ take care of the last lot. Unfortunately, as has happened **literally every single other time** this has happened in the past two hundred years," he emphasized pointedly, "when that lot leaves there’s a power vacuum and then another lot comes in to take their place,” he explained, the exasperation and eye-rolling more than evident in his voice even if the angel was too polite - at the moment - to let it show on his face. “Honestly, it’s like you’ve forgotten this happens every few years or so. I’ll deal with this lot like I have every other lot.” Aziraphale’s hand squeezed Crowley’s where it still rested on the angel’s knee, a rather pointed reminder to the demon that, despite his cultivated air of softness, Aziraphale was in fact steely underneath and fully capable of handling his own difficulties when necessary.

The red-headed demon gaped for a moment at Aziraphale’s sheer audacity then chuckled and just shook his head before giving up and simply flopping back onto the couch in a pile of gangly limbs. “I take back what I said earlier, angel. You’re not a bastard. I’m upgrading you to ‘100% That Bitch’.”

The blond smiled innocently but his blue eyes glinted with mischief. “Takes one to know one, love…”


	2. In Hushed Whispers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of recon on A.Z. Fell & Co.
> 
> CW: Heavy Cursing and non-graphic mention of traffic accident and hospitalization

“What the fuck d’you mean Billy’s in hospital? The fucking git was supposed to case the bookshop; how’d he end up in fucking hospital?!”

“Look, all I know’s he ran straight into traffic a couple blocks from the bloody place and my number was the last one he rang so the coppers rang me when they came to scrape him off the lorry that hit ‘im.”

“Jesus, Mary, ‘n Joseph…”

“Yeah. He’s a fucking mess, alright, but the docs say he’ll live. But ah…”

“But what, Sean?”

“Ah hell, mate… Coppers said people heard ‘im yelling some fucking weird stuff before he knocked out. Shite about ‘demons in SoHo’ and ‘the bookshop is bloody haunted’.”

“Arrghh, bloody fucking fucks, Sean! D’you how big of a fit Boss is gonna pitch when he hears about this shit _again_? He’ll go bloody barmy!”

“You think I don’t fucking _know_ that, Randall? I was there when the Triads tried to tell him about what happened to them! I know **exactly** how fucking barmy Boss’ll go if he hears about demons again! I still can’t stand the smell of steak…”

“Alright, alright… Jesus, Sean. I get it. But what do we fucking tell him then?”

“Just… Fuck, we just tell ‘im Billy was in an accident. Stepped off the curb too quick and a lorry got ‘im. That’s all he needs to know right now. For all anyone else knows, Billy’s brains were fucking scrambled when he got got and he left half his marbles on Piccadilly.”

“... yeah. Yeah, you’re right, Sean. I’ll break it to Boss, just like you said. He walked out in front of a lorry on Piccadilly and you’re dealing with the hospital.”

“Good. Keep it simple. We can get Jonesy over to Fell’s in the next week, once this settles down again. Oh, and text me Kitty’s number if Boss doesn’t call her himself.”

“Ah, shit. Yeah, good thinking. I’m sure he’ll take care of her, but I’ll send it over if he doesn’t. I’ll get ahold of Jonesy and have him keep his schedule open. Cheers, Sean.”

“Cheers, mate. Be seeing ya.”

Sean punched the ‘end call’ button on his phone and heaved a heavy sigh as he slid the piece of technology back into his jacket. This was supposed to have been an easy job. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. Nobody was supposed to need to cover for anybody else. No hospital stays. No getting nailed by bloody lorries. No having to lie to arguably the craziest mob boss in London. It was supposed to be in, out, and fucking done.

 _‘Guess this is what we get for being the bad guys,’_ he scoffed, making his way through the halls of the hospital slowly. He wasn’t in any real hurry to get back to Billy’s room just to sit there and watch the guy sleep off the meds he’d been given to calm him the hell down. Not that he really blamed Billy; he was sure he’d have needed the fucking nap too if roles were reversed. He took a detour through the lounge to grab a cup of coffee for himself, figuring on being there for a few hours yet until Billy’s fiancee got the news and showed up. When his phone vibrated in his pocket he pulled it out and sighed quietly at what he saw on the screen. He took a long sip of coffee to fortify himself and tapped a few buttons on the device before bringing it to his ear as it rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Kitty. It’s Sean…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's a short tease of a chapter, I know! I promise there's more coming! Lol
> 
> I hope the format wasn't too hard to follow along with and all. It was just a scene that played out SO VIVIDLY in my brain with just the dialogue on the phone that I couldn't help but leave it that way when I wrote it. Feedback is always welcome, of course, and you can find me both here and in several Ineffables groups on facebook!
> 
> And as always, thank you for reading! <3


	3. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood... Ish.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Aziraphale's pleasant afternoon is ruined and restored in quick succession.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: descriptions of violence, mild homophobia

In most of the two-hundred-or-so years of its existence (and certainly all of the time in which a certain ethereal man-shaped being has inhabited it), A.Z. Fell & Co. has boasted a rather impressive skylight above the atrium. When the weather is sunny - do bear in mind, this is jolly old England afterall - it fills the majority of the cavernous bookshop with daylight and brings a lovely and charming sort of energy to the place. Humans, particularly those who live in climates where the weather is generally perceived to be ‘poor’ more often than not, just seem to be drawn in by light and equate it with comfort and places where they simply ought to be. This could also be a leftover from the dawn of humankind when light equalled safety from the creatures in the darkness, relatively speaking. A certain angel would wax poetic about the intricacies and ineffabilities of the human condition in regard to that particular subject if given half a chance of course, while a certain demon would simply shrug and let the certain angel talk just to enjoy the company and stare a bit. At any rate, it is a proven fact that bright, airy sorts of shops attract more business and entice more foot-traffic from shoppers, regardless of the reason behind it.

Perhaps that is why Aziraphale only cleaned the accumulated dirt and urban grime from the great skylight once every few months (or rather about how often a pleasant sunny day made an appearance in London). And perhaps that is also why he often cleaned the skylight and remained closed for business that day to enjoy the luxury of the sunshine streaming through his shop in peace with a good book, a glass of something drinkable, and a plate of his favorite nibbles.

Now that the Apocalypse (or Apocaflop, as Crowley had started referring to it) had been averted and both he and Crowley were more or less retired Aziraphale hadn’t even felt guilty about taking a day off just to indulge himself and relax. He smiled at the thought of how Crowley had been so patient with him as he - no, **they** \- worked through the millennia of emotional trauma that their former employers had put them through just for the angel to be able to have a day like today without succumbing to guilt. The demon had seemed to take to freedom like a duck to water, but Aziraphale had had a harder time learning to undo the damage that Heaven’s over-zealous attitude toward, well… everything that Aziraphale had cared about, and that kind of deep-seeded conditioning was just that: deep. Deep and exhausting, even with your best friend right there to hold your hand.

Oh, he was certain that Crowley was working through some Things too; Aziraphale wasn’t a fool. He saw it in the way the demon still hesitated sometimes when they went out somewhere together, as if he were expecting another ambush at any moment. He saw it when Crowley napped on the couch in the back room of the bookshop, whimpering at the monsters in his dreams and twitching his limbs until Aziraphale came and soothed him with a gentle hand on his back or soft fingers combed through his ginger hair.

But Crowley was so… so _resilient_. He had adapted and changed right along with the humans he so adored all the way through their 6000 years on Earth, always shifting something about himself to better fit whatever vision had got into his brilliant head next. It had been downright dizzying and more than a little disconcerting to the angel at first, he had shyly admitted to the demon once during one of their legendary drinking bouts. _‘When one is created to believe that the Almighty’s angels were created in perfection - even if some of them are Fallen now, that’s irrelevant - it is, well. Almost blasphemous to see someone so flippant with their own image, their very corporation. It… it took me a long while to understand, my dear,’_ he had told Crowley, letting the extraordinary amount of alcohol imbibed embolden him. Crowley had merely smiled and giggled (then vehemently denied that a demon could ever make such a cutesy sound), declaring, _‘Is that what you - hic- meant with that “you go too fast for me” thing?! I finally get it, Angel!’_ They had both had a good laugh about it and ended up snuggled close together on the couch when the alcohol finally won out and the celestials passed out, feeling as though a weight had been removed from their friendship with the shared honesty.

Aziraphale smiled fondly at the memory, the tips of his ears pinking softly as he thought about the demon more. He really was quite a remarkable friend… companion… partner? Oh dear. The term partner did have a rather more romantic connotation than was strictly true between them, but there was more than one kind of partner wasn’t there? He and Crowley had been business partners for hundreds of years thanks to the Arrangement, so there was that. And one could argue that they had been part of each other’s lives for long enough that ‘best friends’ and ‘partners’ were essentially the same thing, no? AND despite how often people assumed Aziraphale was naive about such things, there were plenty of people in the world who had purely platonic life partners as well! That certainly seemed appropriate for the two of them at least, he thought. He wondered how Crowley might react to being called his partner…

“Oh, God… _no, please_! Shit…” The sound of something heavy hitting the trash bins in the alley, the desperate plea to an indifferent deity, and the stomp of heavy feet filtered through the open skylight panels and startled Aziraphale out of his pleasant reverie. Instantly the Principality was on his feet and with a snap was on the roof of the building, peering down into the alley behind the bookshop from above.

Two mountains of men were closing in on a smaller figure who was trying desperately to get to their feet from behind several overturned trash bins. Aziraphale felt his wings bristle on the ethereal plane as righteous anger flashed through him as recognition set in; he knew those brutes. Not by name but by association, and judging by the bruised and slightly bloody countenance of the woman staggering to her feet now, their _association_ was all the furious angel cared about at the moment.

With a soft _whumph_ of displacement and the _whoosh_ of a diving bird, Aziraphale summoned his wings and descended to the alley behind his shop in one smooth motion. He landed in front of the two gang members and extended his wings in a battle-ready frame, shielding the terrified woman whom he now recognized as one of his neighbors behind himself. “You boys are decidedly in the wrong neighborhood,” Aziraphale announced by way of a warning; he wouldn’t deign to call them ‘men’. “Either you will reassess your exceedingly poor life choices and leave _right now_ , or I shall have to do something drastic.”

The tableau in the alley was comically still for several heartbeats while all three humans tried to rationalize what they were suddenly seeing and hearing. For her part, Mrs. Harmon recovered the quickest and shielded herself from her attackers as much as she could behind Aziraphale’s wings and picked up a discarded bit of the PVC armature she had been throwing away when she had been ambushed. If this was happening and it wasn’t just a figment of a concussed and probably unconscious imagination, then by God she wasn’t going down without a fight. The florist didn’t know why her subconscious had picked kindly Mr. Fell the bookseller to be her ‘guardian angel’ in her concussion dream, but as the gangsters on the other side of the angel began to recover their wits that seemed like a question best left for later.

“I dunno what fucking trick this is but you ain’t gonna do nuthin’ but get your arse beat too, ya goddamn fairy,” Brute #1 scowled and cracked his knuckles. The intimidation attempt was rather spoiled however, by the sidelong glance he gave to Brute #2 to ensure he wasn’t making idle threats and his buddy was indeed still backing him up.

“Yeah,” Brute #2 agreed, although his voice quavered with uncertainty as he stared wide-eyed at Aziraphale.

A cold smile that did nothing to ease the icy glint of his storm-hued eyes spread across the angel’s face. “There is no trick, I assure you, but,” Aziraphale shrugged slightly, “have it your way.”

Fearless and confident were something the thugs were utterly inexperienced with when it came to their straightforward and not-at-all-subtle job description. So, like most predators when faced with something unfamiliar and frightening, they attacked.

‘Bigmouth’ stepped forward like an experienced heavy-weight boxer and swung a ham-sized fist at Aziraphale’s jaw while ‘Backup’ tried to edge around to his right in order to reach Mrs. Harmon again and finish what he had started before being interrupted. Aziraphale pulled his hands out from behind his wings as soon as Bigmouth began to move, revealing a trash bin lid in one hand and a flaming pocket-knife in the other. Bigmouth’s fist hit the metal bin lid with a resounding _clang_ followed by a loud yelp as he doubled over clutching his broken hand.

Mrs. Harmon flinched at the sudden clanging on the other side of her protector but didn’t take her eyes off the advancing thug in front of her. As Backup skirted around Aziraphale’s left wing while he was distracted with his colleague, the petite florist hefted the piece of PVC pipe in her hands and swung it as hard as she could at the gangster’s head. Backup got his arm up in time to block the blow to the head so, thinking on her feet, Mrs. Harmon pulled the pipe back and simply rammed it into the man’s gut instead, punching the air from his body and knocking him back against the wall of the alley.

Drawn by the sound of Mrs. Harmon’s successful attack, Aziraphale’s head whipped to his left to make sure Backup was indeed down for the count and lashed out with his wing to knock the thug’s head against the brick wall for good measure. Backup slumped to the ground in a heap as Bigmouth stood up with a furious roar and charged Aziraphale in a rage. The Principality told Mrs. Harmon, “Close your eyes, dear,” before taking a bracing stance and calling upon his angelic nature in full.

Even from behind her tightly closed eyelids Mrs. Harmon could tell how bright the suddenly-lit alley was. Bigmouth tripped over himself and fell flat on his crooked nose at the sight of spinning wheels of fire and too many eyes and how many wings was that? His mouth dropped open and he gaped like a fish as he stared into the gleaming depths of the avenging angel in front of himself, sobbing and beginning to pray in alternate bursts when Aziraphale began to Speak.

**“Edmond James, thou hast chosen crime and violence over the life of study and joy thou could have had and led thy brother Frederick into sin as well! Thou hast been wicked and deceitful, bigoted and hurtful all in the name of Greed and Want of Power! ENOUGH, I SAY! No more! Thou wilt abandon thy life of criminality and violence and devote thyself to the marginalized peoples thou once abused! I am the Principality Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden and Protector of the Earth; I proclaim this in the name of the Ineffable Plan! Take thy brother and BEGONE FROM HERE!”**

At the angel’s command Eddie scrambled to his feet with a terrified whimper and grabbed his still-groggy brother by the shoulder, shoving him roughly to his feet and stumbling out of the alley in a blind rush to get as far away as humanly possible from the celestial being behind them. With the gangsters gone and the danger passed, Aziraphale bottled up his angelic essence within his human corporation once more, banished his wings back to the ethereal plane, and turned to face his injured neighbor.

“It is quite safe now, my dear,” Aziraphale murmured gently, not touching the traumatized woman yet. “You can open your eyes again.”

Mrs. Harmon’s eyes snapped open, the green irises almost eclipsed by adrenaline-blown pupils. She blinked a few times in confusion seeing no gangsters and just kindly, quite human-looking Mr. Fell standing before her. “I… That wasn’t a dream, was it?” she asked, hesitating as she looked down at the piece of pipe still clutched white-knuckled in her left hand.

The angel smiled as only a true being of Love really could. “No, my dear. I am sorry to say it was not a dream,” he answered her gently but honestly. “And I am so sorry I was too late to stop them from harming you altogether. May I?” Aziraphale asked, raising his hand palm-up but waiting for her permission to do anything further.

“You’re an angel; you have nothing to apologize to the likes of me for,” she blurted out before she could stop herself. The pipe in her hand clattered to the ground as Mrs. Harmon clapped her hand to her mouth, shocked at her own boldness.

Aziraphale was delighted by the woman’s spirit and her frankness, however. “Oh, my dear,” he chuckled warmly. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, I fear. You are always kind and compassionate, and your customers simply adore you and your flowers. You are a good woman and that is why I am sorry for my lateness. You of all people did not deserve that kind of treatment,” Aziraphale told her just as frankly.

The smaller woman teared up at the praise and took her neighbor’s still-raised hand on instinct, clutching it tenderly in both of her own. She lowered her forehead to their hands for a moment with a quiet sniffle, her body beginning to shake with the effort of holding back tears, and Aziraphale gently pulled her into a warm embrace. Once tucked against the softness of the angel’s worn waistcoat and surrounded by the love that seemed to radiate from the man even without the pomp and circumstance of his angelic form, Mrs. Harmon quietly allowed herself to fall apart.

Aziraphale held the woman in his arms while she quietly sobbed against his chest, alternating between murmuring soothing nonsense to her and humming melodically. He rubbed light circles on her back with one hand and carefully stroked her hair with the other. He briefly considered healing her injuries while he held her but quickly decided that getting her permission was more important than his need to comfort and help her considering what she had already been through that afternoon. It wouldn’t hurt her to be concussed a few moments longer than it would take to wait for her permission, he reminded himself patiently.

After a few minutes of Aziraphale’s gentle ministrations Mrs. Harmon’s sobs became quiet sniffles and her body’s shudders relaxed into the more occasional shiver as it purged the adrenaline from her system. She wiped her eyes with her hands and pulled away from Aziraphale with a slightly embarrassed but grateful smile when he handed her his tartan handkerchief. “Thank you. For everything,” she added softly.

“It is my pleasure to protect those who need it, my dear. And you did just fine in our battle yourself,” Aziraphale smiled back. “Would you allow me to heal you? I am concerned for you, my dear. Those brutes gave you a seeing to before I heard the commotion, didn’t they?”

Mrs. Harmon frowned at the memory, still a feisty woman despite being well into middle-age and a small person. “They did. And yes, if you wish to, I won’t tell the Lord’s angel no,” she quipped smoothly, making Aziraphale smile fondly at her. “Marched right into my back room like they owned the place and demanded their ‘protection money’! Like I haven’t told them where to shove their - Lord forgive my language - _bloody_ threats and-and _stupid_ rackets every other time they come ‘round!”

Aziraphale was proud to say that he performed the healing while he listened to the woman rant angrily and did not let his own anger botch the job. It was a close thing, but he managed. It also helped the woman wasn’t injured beyond a split lip, a black eye, and a few bruises from being tossed into the trash bins in the alley, but that was neither here nor there anymore. “Well. They won’t be back to bother anyone in the neighborhood again,” he told her smartly once she was finished and healed up.

“Oh no; you certainly did take care of that,” she agreed, an edge of disbelief in her voice as she considered the kindly-looking bookseller for a long moment. “You… you really _are_ an angel, aren’t you?” she asked quietly, green eyes searching.

Aziraphale gave her a gentle and reassuring smile. “I am, yes. But I must ask you to keep it between you and your wife, my dear. It… would not do for me to be drawing more attention than I already have to myself,” he explained.

Mrs. Harmon’s face relaxed into a mixture of relief that she wasn’t crazy and amusement that he assumed or maybe expected her to tell her wife about him regardless of what he intended. “She’s an atheist; Meg will never believe me,” she chuckled a little. “But she’ll be grateful to you, angel or not, Mr. Fell. And so am I. Thank you again.”

The angel couldn’t have kept the smile off his face if he had wanted to. “Please, call me Aziraphale. I think now that we’ve been in battle together, the least we can do is call each other by first names,” he said with a good-natured laugh.

“Then I’m Helen, and I insist you walk me home so I can introduce you to my wife and thank you properly with tea and as many homemade hobnobs as you can eat,” Helen laughed and held out her hand to shake Aziraphale’s officially. “If you’ve not got anything to get back to, of course…”

“My dear, I think you’ll find I can eat a great many hobnobs indeed, especially when they are homemade with love,” the angel responded with a glint in his blue eyes. He shook hands with his new friend and gently placed her hand in the crook of his elbow to escort her around the alley to the front of her shop and the promise of tea and biscuits.


	4. Really, Mother?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile in Mayfair... While Aziraphale has an exciting encounter in Soho, Crowley has his own unexpected meeting in Mayfair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally a Crowley POV chapter! This certainly wasn't the chapter that I had intended to sit down and write, but it was what the characters told me to write so here we are! LOL
> 
> It was a joy to write so I hope you enjoy it! Please do tell me your thoughts in the comments! <3

Of course it had to be a sunny day. Why wouldn’t it be?

Now there would be no chance at all of getting Aziraphale out of his damn library-that-he-insisted-was-a-bookshop even with the promise of a drive in the country and a picnic with a hamper from the Ritz (kept miraculously fresh for the drive, of course). All the angel would want to do is curl up in his second favorite chair on the upper floor under the big-ass skylight with all its bloody fresh air and _sunshine_ , eat those disgusting little nibbly sandwiches with cucumber and watercress that tasted like grass clippings soaked in vaguely cucumber-scented water, and bloody _read_ all day.

Ugh. It just wasn’t fair. It was as if someone was playing a cruel joke on him, he huffed dramatically to himself. And just because he was in _that sort of mood_ now, Crowley scowled up at the brilliantly blue sky as he walked and growled out an acerbic, “Ha ha, Mother.”

Engrossed as he was in his own overly-dramaticized tale of woe, Crowley barely spared a thought to his surroundings as he stormed through Mayfair and made his way toward the bookshop and one (1) fussy angel, occasionally cursing or muttering under his breath as he went. When a small hand grasped his wrist and pulled hard on it just as he was about to step off the curb and cross the street, the demon had worked himself into such a Sulk that he was ready to curse whomever had been bold and stupid enough to touch him to Hell and back for their insolence.

Crowley whirled to face the person… and blinked in confusion when his gaze met with empty air. He let his gaze track slowly downwards until he met the smiling innocence of a young boy who smartly tugged on his wrist again and took a determined step backwards to drag Crowley another step away from the street. The demon stepped back with the smiling child in a daze of utter confusion, his sulking mood utterly forgotten now. “Um…” he managed finally when they were about three steps back from the busy street.

“You almost stepped out in front of that big lorry, sir!” the boy informed him, his smile abandoned for an adorable attempt at gentle scolding. “My mum tells me I need to watch where I’m walkin’ more, so I unnerstand and s’why I grabbed you. Don’t feel bad. I almost did it yes’erday too,” he added cheerfully, shifting his grip from Crowley’s wrist to hold his hand properly.

Aziraphale had playfully accused Crowley of being soft for children for thousands of years - for good reason and with plenty of evidence - but even Crowley himself knew that if the angel had seen the way this one earnest and innocent boy had melted the demon with just a few sentences and a gap-toothed smile, he would never have lived it down. Ever.

“... ngk,” the demon choked eloquently, holding the boy’s hand tenderly in his much larger one. Crowley gave himself a mental shake and knelt down so he was face-to-face with the young man and smiled softly at him. “Well, I suppose I owe you my life then… what’s your name, young hero?” he asked, smiling over the boy’s shoulder at a woman who was certainly his mother judging by looks alone. “My name is Anthony.”

The boy’s face lit up. “Jacob! I’m Jacob!” he answered proudly, puffing out his scrawny chest as his mother gently placed her hand on his shoulder. Jacob looked up at his mother and grinned. “Mum! He called me a hero! Did you hear?”

His mother smiled down at him with obvious pride and tenderly stroked Jacob’s hair. “I did, my little love. I’m so proud of you,” she told him. Turning her attention to Crowley she smiled and held her hand out to him to shake as she introduced herself. “I’m Vivian, Jacob’s mother. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Anthony, was it?”

Crowley stood and shook Vivian’s hand with a genuine smile. “It is. Anthony Crowley, at your service,” he added, surprising himself to find he meant it. It wasn’t often that the demon felt inspired to Bless someone just because; it was usually, in one roundabout way or another, to impress or flirt with Aziraphale, but he was now. Being hit by a delivery truck may not have actually killed Crowley but it certainly would have meant an inconvenient trip back to Hell and with Hastur still pissed off about Ligur’s death and Beez still pissed off about everything else, discorporation now was as good as a death sentence Crowley was certain.

Beyond his gratitude to the two humans for sparing him the embarrassment of an inconvenient discorporation, Crowley found himself simply _liking_ both Jacob and Vivian which was far more shocking to the demon than most anything else going through his chaotic brain at the moment. Oh Aziraphale was going to have a field day with this one, he groaned inwardly but snapped his attention back to Vivian when she chuckled and spoke again.

“Well, the pleasure’s all ours, Mr. Crowley, truly. I’d say we were sorry to disturb your walk, but well…” Vivian trailed off and smiled at Crowley, a teasing glint in her amber-brown eyes.

“But that would be a lie and lying’s bad!” Jacob piped up cheerfully, looking between Crowley and his mother.

Crowley let out a bark of delighted laughter at the teasing and grinned down at Jacob with a fond tousle of the boy’s hair. “Yes it is, little hero. Your mum’s taught you well,” he smiled at them. A sudden idea struck him. “Ya know… you look like a young man who likes books and adventures, am I right, Jacob?”

Jacob’s grin was almost ear to ear at this point and he bounced up and down excitedly. “Do I?! Mum reads to me e’ery night an’ I read chapter books all by myself too!” he announced proudly, his speech getting less enunciated and more like an excitable child as he babbled happily. “I like stories with knights an’ dragons an’-an’-an’ wizar’s! But I kinda like his’ory too, like soldiers an’ kings an’ stuff like that…”

Crowley laughed delightedly at the boy’s enthusiasm again and ruffled his hair fondly. “Me too,” he shared in a conspiratorial whisper. “So I’ll tell ya what. My best friend owns a great big bookshop over in Soho. It’s got a bunch of really valuable collections of really old books but…” He paused for effect, enjoying how Jacob hung on his every word now. “He’s also got a collection of children’s storybooks full of knights and dragons and soldiers and wizards too. _And_ … I bet I could convince him to read some of them to you if you promise not to touch the really expensive books without his permission,” Crowley finished.

Vivian’s mouth dropped open slightly at Crowley’s offer but Jacob just about burst with excitement, jumping up and down between the two adults with glee. “WOW! I promise, I promise! Mum, Mum, can we _please_?! That sounds so COOL! Can we go, Mum?! PLEASEEEEE?”

“Oh my,” Vivian stammered, overcome by the generous offer. “Are you certain your friend won’t mind, Mr. Crowley? We wouldn’t want to impose...”

Crowley waved his hand as if to physically brush away the woman’s concerns. “Not at all, and please, just Crowley,” he grinned. “Aziraphale will be delighted to meet another avid reader and enjoyer of books like himself. I think he and Jacob will get along just smashingly, and you and I can have a nice glass of wine while we watch them get lost in the stacks,” Crowley chuckled.

“That sounds lovely, Crowley,” she smiled, Jacob crowing victoriously at her side. “We’re on the way to visit my mother-in-law today, but perhaps tomorrow we could come ‘round? Would that be alright?”

“Perfect. I know Aziraphale’s closed today, and I’ll warn you he keeps odd hours at the shop,” he chuckled fondly, “but if you knock and tell him you’re a friend of mine he’ll welcome you in no problem. I think I’ll be there myself around noon-ish tomorrow, if you’d prefer I introduce you?” Crowley offered, producing a freshly-miracled business card from his jacket pocket and handing it over to Vivian.

The woman took the card with a smile and slipped it into her purse before taking Jacob’s hand again. “That sounds like we’ve got a plan then. What do you say, Jacob?”

“Thank you, Mr. Crowley! I’m glad I saved your life today!” the small boy declared with the biggest grin Crowley had seen yet.

The demon grinned back and knelt down to give the boy a hug, Jacob happily squeezing Crowley about the neck and making him gasp playfully until the boy let go and once more stood by his mum, still smiling that beatific smile. “Me too, kid. Me too.”

Vivian watched the boys with a tender smile and surreptitiously wiped the emotional tears from her eyes before her son turned back to her. She stepped forward when Crowley stood straight again and hugged him herself before she lost her nerve or thought better of it. “Thank you, Crowley,” she whispered to him, hugging him tightly. “Your kindness to him means more than you know,” Vivian added before breaking the embrace and taking her son’s hand again with her motherly smile back in place.

The woman’s earnest love for her son and the underlying sadness at… something deeper overwhelmed Crowley for a moment and left him speechless until Vivian released him and stepped back again. The demon’s eyes raked the woman from behind his glasses quickly, searching her for a clue to that sadness. Ah, he had missed the Armed Forces Veterans badge on Vivian’s lapel at first. Well, that answered that question then.

“My mobile number is on the back of the card I gave you. If you have need of anything or get lost tomorrow, you know, just gimme a ring,” Crowley added, returning Jacob’s wave as the two headed off again.

Vivian smiled shyly and nodded her acknowledgement of Crowley’s statement, waving at him herself as she and Jacob crossed the street to head deeper into Mayfair.

And if her grief seemed a little easier to carry today and Jacob’s grandmother was having a good day and remembered who they were and Jacob didn’t have one asthmatic episode all day… well, maybe it was a small miracle.

“ _Really_ , Mother?” Crowley muttered under his breath, amused rather than disgusted now. “You couldn’t just let me be cranky, could you? You just _had_ to send the kid and his mum.” The demon waited until the crosswalk signaled green for the pedestrians on his side of the street before stepping off the curb this time, unable to hide his wry smile as he glanced up at the blue sky again.


	5. An Empty Bookshop is Never Good News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley finds his mood much improved after his chance encounter with Vivian and Jacob... at least for a little while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI! Yes, I'm still here! Life happened and then I had to re-work multiple already written chapters because I wrote myself into a glaring plot hole and didn't see it until it slapped me in the face... *heavy sigh*
> 
> BUT! I am back and work on 'Crime Pays' has resumed! I know this chapter is a bit short, but the next couple are going to be fairly sizable, so please bear with me! Much love, thanks for reading, ENJOY! <3

Crowley had come to a decision.

He was going to blame the Almighty for his decidedly good and therefore quite un-demonic mood. And while he was at it, he was blaming Her for the bouquet of white daisies, yellow daffodils, variegated tulips, white violets, and filled out with a few fronds of Maidenhair Fern he had picked up on his way to the bookshop too.

His encounter with Jacob and Vivian had left him in a much better mood than he had set off from his flat in at any rate, so he supposed he had that going for him despite the flutter of nerves that had taken up residence in his chest at his snap decision to buy flowers for Aziraphale. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t shown up at the bookshop with flowers before, he reminded himself reasonably.

True, but he also hadn’t specifically crafted those bouquets according to Victorian flower language and spelled out a truly repulsively sweet message with the bloody flowers either, the panicky, love-struck part of his brain countered.

Crowley growled at himself and tightened his grip on the bouquet. He could just about see the bookshop from the corner he was waiting on; it was far too late to be second-guessing himself now. He had the flowers and that was that. Maybe Aziraphale wouldn’t know what they meant (yeah, right) and Crowley wouldn’t have to explain his ‘message’ any further than a simple ‘I just brought you some flowers for the shop since it was such a nice day, Angel.’ Maybe… Maybe he would know what they meant and it would be the catalyst Crowley needed to tell Aziraphale how he felt, how he had always felt about the angel.

The demon sighed and banished that thought right out of his head as he started off across the street. He knew from experience letting himself think along those lines just led to anxiety attacks and, quite frankly, he just wasn’t in the mood for his own shit today. He was happy, for once, and he wanted to stay that way. So he was going to give his friend (crush) some pretty flowers, have a nice dinner somewhere quaint, and maybe convince Aziraphale to go into the country and --

As if thinking about him too many times was some sort of sick, twisted cue for bad luck, Crowley caught a powerful shift of angelic power that tasted unmistakably like his angel and took off like a shot toward the bookshop. Whether it was the slightly-too-sharp snarl on his face or the aura of demonic intensity he couldn’t quite control as his emotions ran over, not one person got in Crowley’s way the entirety of the two blocks he had left to sprint.

The demon crashed through the bookshop doors with a gasp. “Angel?! Aziraphale! Where the Heaven are you?!” he yelled while he frantically dashed through the over-crowded shop.

Crowley tore up the spiral staircase to the second floor and was figuratively and literally bowled over by a surge of ethereal power as he reached the reading nook under the skylight. He fell flat on his back and had the breath knocked out of him as if a wave had picked him up and slammed him to the sand at the beach. Hot on the heels of the power surge a Voice boomed through the open panels of the skylight that Crowley would have recognized anywhere. “Aziraphale…” he coughed, rolling to his feet with very little grace but as much speed as his demonic corporation possessed.

With a snap of his fingers Crowley crouched on the bookshop’s roof, his eyes darting around to search for Aziraphale behind his dark glasses. When his gaze finally flicked down to the alley below him the ginger’s mouth fell open in awe at the scene playing out there.

“Unholy saints below…” he gaped.

Crowley couldn’t remember the last time he had witnessed Aziraphale unleash his full angelic form and yet there he was in the alley below, his wings, all-seeing eyes, and churning wheels of holy flame on splendid display. Waves of Holy Grace rolled off the Principality in hypnotizing pulses and suddenly the demon _absolutely understood_ why angels prefaced their appearances to humans with, **‘Be Not Afraid.’**

As Aziraphale Spoke, Crowley found himself falling prey to the soothing, hypnotizing aura of Grace as the fringes of it brushed him where he crouched on the roof above. Whether it was his baser reptilian aspect’s instincts or an indirect effect of the holy energy, the all-encompassing warmth and comfort of the angel’s Grace washed over him like a balm to his Fallen soul, granting him a sudden and heart-breaking glimpse of that which was taken from him when he Fell. Tears came unbidden to his eyes as he stared, transfixed, at Aziraphale’s angelic form.

_‘... I proclaim this in the name of the Ineffable Plan! Take thy brother and **BEGONE FROM HERE!** ’_

The angelic command rang out like a gong, his holy aura exploding outwards like a soap bubble popping, sending a tsunami of Power and Grace racing away from the Principality. The two unfortunate humans it was directed at stumbled and scrambled to comply and Crowley barely registered seeing them running out of the alley and heading west before the tsunami crashed over and into the demon.

Demonic power warred only briefly against angelic and was quickly overcome. Crowley’s brain seemed to short-circuit momentarily as holy energy swamped his thoughts, filling his mind with nothing but whispered repeats of Aziraphale’s command to begone. He clutched his head as if he could physically wrench the whispers out of his mind and slumped to the rooftop in terrified confusion. Never before had the demon witnessed a command like this as a bystander and somewhere in the recesses of his mind a thought occurred that he hoped he never did again.

He fought against the compulsion to flee his hiding place, still curled up and clutching his temples as he writhed on the rooftop. Crowley felt his resistance slipping and fear washed over him again as he panicked about what might happen if he failed and had to flee. How long would the Command hold? Would he ever be able to come back again? How would Aziraphale react to Crowley just up and disappearing after all these years? Would Crowley even be able to contact him to let him know what happened? Aziraphale would be so hurt… Crowley’s worst fear. How could he ever forgive himself if he hurt Aziraphale like that again? He couldn’t; he was unforgivable, Fallen… 

As quickly as it had grabbed hold of the demon, the holy energy subsided, leaving Crowley to flop bonelessly to the roof. His wiry body heaved as he gasped in lungfuls of air, trying desperately to calm the panic and adrenaline coursing through his corporation. He grabbed for his glasses with a shaky hand and scrubbed the other down his face roughly. Once the salt-crust of dried tears was wiped clean and the worst of the shakes passed, he perched his Valentino’s back on his nose and groggily sat up.

“Well… that was a thing,” Crowley muttered to nobody in particular. Peeking over the edge of the roof he scanned the tight alley for Aziraphale, frowning when there was no angel to find. “What the… where the Heaven did he get to now?!” the demon groaned and pushed himself to his unsteady feet.

Getting a proper look at the scene (or lack thereof, now…) he allowed his serpentine tongue to flick out and taste the air, searching for any trace of Aziraphale...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Crowley... Don't worry, the 'comfort' part of the hurt/comfort will come next chapter and our favorite snake demon will feel much better!
> 
> Also, if you enjoyed Helen the badass, middle-aged florist, she and her wife Meg also feature in my just published work 'A Very Punchable Face, Indeed'! We also get to see more of them next chapter right here, so I do hope you'll stick around for that as well... ;)
> 
> As always, thank you for taking this literary ride with me, my dears. Your kudos, comments, and squees give me life <3


	6. New Friends, Old Friends, and Common Enemies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley gets more than he bargained for, thinking he's going to rescue his angel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here is the 'comfort' part of our Hurt/Comfort! Enjoy!

“If it isn’t too forward of me, my dears… I must ask. How _did_ the two of you meet? I sense there’s quite a story there,” Aziraphale chuckled. An atheist and a relatively devout Christian were a bit of an odd pair - not that he was really one to talk on **that** subject, he didn’t fail to realize - and he could feel how much love there was between them. Considering how Helen had gushed about her wife quite tenderly on the walk to their shop, the angel simply couldn’t resist asking any longer.

Meg and Helen shared a secret smirk before they both let out guffaws.

“Oh Lord, you’re not wrong on that one, love!” Helen giggled.

“Helen here is a bit of a shit when she puts her mind to it, is what happened,” Meg grumbled fondly at her. Her eyes crinkled at the corners with the effort of keeping her playful smirk from becoming a full-on grin.

“I resemble that remark, wifey!” the tiny florist retorted in mock-affront.

Aziraphale felt nearly drunk on the love surrounding the little backroom table the three of them were sitting around. True love really was the most heady of intoxicants. He had quite forgotten, considering how infrequently he ran into it. In fact, now that he thought about it, Aziraphale could only pinpoint a handful of instances that he could recall as ‘true love’. There was that lovely couple in Jerusalem… before that in the early tribes of the Celts he remembered a truly beautiful ‘found-family’ of four… and sometime in the early Victorian era he recalled blessing a couple near the estate of Pemberly, but couldn’t _quite_ remember their names now… Aziraphale’s reverie was cut short by the conversation and the loving couple at hand.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Meg directed pointedly at Helen, “Before she left the business to open this place, Helen here was a journalist.”

“Oh now... that’s a bit of a stretch, love,” Helen interjected with a pointed look back. “I wrote the horoscopes and the ‘Ladies’ Advice’ column,” she explained to Aziraphale, laughing again. “And we had known each other for about ten years at that point, the best of friends - “

“And I had been in the most shite job you could imagine _and_ my fiance had just dumped me for my younger sister,” Meg took over the story again with a wry look. “And do you know what this lovely little pixie of a woman did for me, Mr. Fell?”

Aziraphale shook his head, too entranced by the story and too love-drunk to verbally respond.

Meg grinned while Helen rolled her eyes playfully at her wife’s theatrical recitation of events. “She knew how down in the dumps I was and she knew I always read whatever it was she wrote - and I mean _whatever she wrote_ \- so Helen would make sure that my horoscope was always just what I needed to hear to lift me up a bit. She did this for almost a year, Aziraphale! A whole bloody year and didn’t tell me until 5 years later - during our first dance at our own wedding!” she finished with a chuckle.

Helen laughed along with Meg and leaned over in her chair to press a tender kiss to her cheek when she was finished. “It’s all true,” she giggled, color tinting her cheekbones from laughing so much.

Aziraphale gasped in delight when Meg was through and clapped his hands joyfully, joining in the laughter. “Oh, what a beautiful love story you share,” he sighed, unable to stop smiling. “You so very rarely hear such a tale anymore; it’s so… so _refreshing_! Thank you for telling me, my dears, it does my heart good to see such kind souls together and so obviously in love with each other,” he added with a knowing smile.

As if on cue, before the ladies could answer Aziraphale’s compliment, the door to the flower shop burst open with such force all three occupants of the table startled and jumped to their feet. The gravity of the situation that had brought Aziraphale and Helen back to the flower shop to begin with came flooding back and slammed them solidly into adrenaline-fueled fight-or-flight, thinking the gangsters had called for backup and were now out for blood. Aziraphale managed to slip himself seamlessly in front of both women and readied himself for battle once more, while Meg grabbed the biggest knife from the butcher’s block on the worktop and Helen readied herself by the backdoor with the phone, ready to call the police. With a thought and a shimmer in the air, Aziraphale’s pearlescent wings unfolded from his back and arched carefully overhead in the small room before falling into a defensive position to shield Meg as he stepped into the doorway and she fell in with her knife behind him. Whatever or whomever was about to come around the corner and into the stockroom, the three of them were ready.

Or so the angel thought.

“Angel? Aziraphale, are you in here?! I swear to Satan, if one hair on his head is hurt, I’ll send you all to Hell personally!” came an all-too-familiar voice from the front of the shop. With his fangs extended, fingernails elongated into proper claws, and serpent’s scales lining his cheekbones, jawline, and disappearing into the collar of his shirt, Crowley rounded the doorway and stormed into the stockroom looking ready to fillet the first person who stood in his way with his bare claws.

In a baffling turn of events for the demon, that person was not only the man-shaped being he had barged in searching for and was prepared to rescue by any means necessary, but was also braced for battle at the other end of the stockroom in all his angelic splendor and was, in fact, protecting two humans who were armed with a telephone and what appeared to be a chef’s knife. The demon stopped in his tracks when he saw Aziraphale, almost skidding on the linoleum so fast was his momentum arrested. 

“Uh… what… what’s going on here, Angel?” Crowley stuttered, blinking and looking utterly flummoxed. Somewhere in the back of his mind the thought occurred that his demonic visage was thoroughly ruined by his standing there stupidly with his mouth hanging open and gaping like a particularly shocked fish.

The demon had been certain that he would find Aziraphale in some sort of danger or distress with how suddenly he had disappeared from the alley behind the bookshop. Finding the angel not only whole and hale, but apparently ready to do battle on behalf of the safety of those Crowley had expected to be Aziraphale’s captors was, quite frankly, baffling. Crowley’s eyes flicked rapidly between the angel and the two women he was shielding with his wings, desperately attempting to make sense of what he was seeing.

“Crowley, my dear boy! How did you - Ohhhh, you did the _ppffthh_ thing, didn’t you?” Aziraphale interrupted himself, blowing a small raspberry to refer to Crowley’s snakey impression of a bloodhound. 

That, at least, snapped the demon out of the confused stupor he was stuck in.

“I’m sorry… ‘ _ppffth_ ’ thing?” he repeated, visibly bristling with indignation. (Meg would later **swear** she could see his ginger hair stand on end.) “What - how dare - you are a - what the actual FU- “ Crowley spluttered, but Aziraphale crisply cut him off before he had a chance to really build up his incoming rant.

“My dear boy, you should meet Helen and Meg,” the angel transitioned smoothly, stepping aside and folding his wings neatly back into the ethereal plane so Crowley could come into the room. “This is their shop. I do hope you didn’t damage anything with your entrance…” he added with a raised brow at the demon.

“I didn’t!” Crowley sputtered, still indignant over Aziraphale’s comment about his tongue, and quietly snapped his fingers to repair the cracked glass panel in the door and the impact damage on the wall where the door had dented the drywall. For good measure, he flipped the sign on the door to ‘closed’ and locked it as well. He scowled at the angel but followed his suggestion and stepped through the doorway, scanning the two women with an accusing glare behind his glasses. “So, is someone going to tell me what the Heaven happened?” he groused instead of introducing himself like a polite gentleman-shaped being.

Meg stared the tall redhead down from her spot just inside the doorway, having remained in a defensive position in front of her wife even after Aziraphale recognized and introduced the sudden and quite obviously not-human interloper. Helen had said the kindly bookseller was an angel and Mr. Fell had helped her explain a few things on that subject, but it was one thing to be **told** a thing like that and quite another entirely to **see** resplendent white wings, fangs, claws, and snake scales on neighbors she had thought were entirely human as recently as just this morning. Her logic and her lack-of-faith warred briefly in her mind until she mentally shook herself and plowed forward, deciding to just roll with the fantastic things she was seeing and deal with the ecclesiatical and metaphysical implications of those things later when her wife and livelihood were safe. Meg was of a height with Aziraphale and was rounded and soft in build but strong underneath from years of lifting heavy crates in the flower shop, making her barely shorter than Crowley and what most men would consider intimidating, and she would be **damned** if some skinny, ginger twink in tight leather pants was going to frighten her wife and break things in **her** shop whether he had fangs and claws or not. Her sharp hazel eyes scrutinized Crowley, succeeding in making the demon shift uncomfortably under her gaze after several tense moments between them.

“I don’t know. Are _you_ going to apologize for barging in here like some crazed lunatic and thinking you’re in _any_ position to make demands?” Meg asked pointedly, not breaking eye contact with Crowley despite the dark lenses covering his slitted eyes.

Crowley’s ears and high cheekbones tinted pink at the call-out on his behavior. It wasn’t often that a human managed to embarrass him, letalone so cuttingly or quickly. The demon’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly a few times and he looked over at Aziraphale briefly before he sheepishly nodded. “Er... yes. I apologize for my rude behavior and for frightening you all.”

Meg continued to stare the ginger down for a few moments after his apology. It was Helen who decided there had been enough posturing between the two and stepped around her wife, smoothly extending her hand to Crowley and introducing herself formally.

“I’m Helen, Meg’s wife and the resident florist, and I accept and appreciate your apology,” she stated with a warm smile. “I suspect, however, there’s a good reason for your… dramatic… entrance?”

The demon’s posture visibly relaxed when the smaller woman came forward and accepted his apology. His fangs shrank back to slightly-too-sharp canines and the red and black scales across his skin faded back to his usual smooth, pale, freckled complexion. “Um, Crowley,” he answered and shook Helen’s hand, remembering to retract his claws before taking the woman’s small hand in his. “And, yeah. I, um. I expected to find Aziraphale, ah… in trouble?”

Realization dawned bright and blinding for Aziraphale. “Oh, good lord… Crowley were you in the alley when I Commanded those two ruffians?!” he exclaimed, looking at the demon with concern.

Crowley shook his head. “Not exactly? Above it. I was on the bookshop roof,” he clarified. “Got there just before you went off on ‘em.”

“So you missed the important bit where Aziraphale showed up to rescue me and you thought he was defending himself…? Oh, you poor dear; no wonder you came in here like a bat out of hell!” Helen gasped, catching on to where Aziraphale was leading. “Come in and have a seat, lovey. We’ll explain everything.”

“Tea or coffee?” Meg asked him, moving around the table to the worktop as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened and she was merely getting coffee for a guest or one of her clients.

“Coffee? Uh, please?” Crowley answered, obviously off-balanced by the women’s sudden change in attitude toward him. He looked to Aziraphale for help as Helen led him to the table and pulled out the chair next to the angel for him.

“Angel… what the Heaven is going on?” he asked again, a note of pleading in his voice now.

“Well, you saw at least some of what happened?” Aziraphale paused for Crowley’s confirmation and received a non-committal ‘ehhh?’ in return. “Oh. Well, I suppose we ought to start at the very beginning then. Helen?”

The florist nodded and took a sip of her tea to fortify herself. “It was that damn gang that’s moved in. Two of their enforcers barged in here - while you nipped out to the store, love,” she added to Meg quickly, “- and they started demanding protection money and making all kinds of threats if I didn’t pay up and ‘fall in line’, blah, blah blah…So I told them to get the _hell_ outta my shop and they and their boss could _kiss my arse_ , and that’s when the bastards slapped me and tossed me into the alley!”

Meg’s knuckles tightened on the back of her wife’s chair as she listened to the full account and she briefly shared a look of righteous fury with Crowley over Helen’s head. It was the demon who spoke next, however.

“Are you hurt?” he asked Helen, brows knitting into an expression of concern as he started to reach across the table. A warm, amber-colored energy blossomed in the demon’s hand and brought a tender expression to the face of the angel next to him when he recognized the energy as a healing one. While Crowley missed Aziraphale melting at his kindness, neither Helen nor Meg did, and the florist tilted her head over her shoulder to smile at her wife before answering the ginger’s concern.

“No, lovey; Aziraphale took care of the split lip and the concussion, but thank you.” She smiled and patted Crowley’s hand in a motherly way.

Crowley let the energy dissipate from his grasp and looked over at Aziraphale then. “So, I assume you were up under the skylight reading and heard the commotion?” When the angel nodded his confirmation, Crowley nodded along as the puzzle pieces started to come together. “That must have been the power shift I felt then…” he mused, beginning to talk with his hands as understanding continued to grow. “I know how you are, Angel; you jumped up and went all ‘avenging angel’ on the bastards, didn’t you? I felt you take your full aspect from two blocks away… That’s what made me come running. I thought - “ he abruptly cut himself off, choking on the words as emotion overwhelmed him. He took his glasses off absently and rubbed both eyes with the heels of his hands to quickly stop the sudden tears that threatened to slide down his face.

“You thought our former sides had come back to settle the score and I was in danger…” Aziraphale finished his thought for him quietly, reaching over to place his hand on Crowley’s shoulder for comfort and squeezing gently. Meg and Helen shared a teary-eyed look of realization and entwined hands over Helen’s shoulder, letting the two men work out their issues without interruption.

Crowley found his throat too tight to speak and settled for a curt nod instead.

“Oh, my dear Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered tenderly to his friend, squeezing his shoulder again. He desperately wished to press a soft kiss to the demon’s temple but knew that Crowley would only accept so much comfort before he withdrew into himself. “I’m here. We’re safe and everything is alright now. It’s alright.”

The ginger sniffed and pressed his hands to his eyes again roughly before he looked up and met Aziraphale’s eyes, not surprised but grateful to find only understanding and affection in the blue-green depths. His lips twitched in what might have passed as a smile as he rapidly blinked away the threat of tears. “... yeah. M’sorry,” he murmured, golden eyes flicking between the others nervously.

Meg released Helen’s hand and finally came around the table to sit next to Crowley. She clapped him on the back a few times in solidarity, understanding his emotions but not really knowing what to say.

“Oh, now. None of that, lovey,” Helen chided him with a gentle smile. “Besides, those eyes are too pretty to be looking so sad. Isn’t that right, Aziraphale?” she asked innocently, earning a subtle kick under the table and a pointed look from her wife.

Aziraphale’s head whipped around to blink at Helen incredulously for a moment before he quickly recovered himself and turned back to look at Crowley with a shy smile and a blush creeping across his face. “Yes, quite right,” he agreed.

For his part, Crowley could only look from person to person around the little table in a heady mixture of discomfort, vulnerability, and indecision. While he and Aziraphale had been slowly working on Crowley’s self-image since the Apoca-flop and helping the now-former-demon learn how to accept more than just negative emotions in regard to himself, it was still difficult for Crowley to allow himself the comfort being so genuinely and generously offered to him. He desperately wanted to put his glasses back on, to put up those familiar walls to hide behind, but Crowley forced himself to take a few deep breaths and relax under the attention, unconsciously leaning into Aziraphale’s touch on his shoulder.

Helen continued to smile that warm, motherly smile at the demon as Crowley leaned further toward Aziraphale. “It’s been a rough morning for all of us, loves. Personally, I think you should finish your coffee, take this tin of hobnobs, and go curl up with a soft blanket and take a little nap,” she fussed at both of them. “Why don’t you swing by around seven tomorrow for dinner? Meg threatened to make beef stew and you most definitely don’t want to miss that.”

Crowley looked over at the woman and then turned his head to look at Meg, his honey-amber eyes as soft as the little smile he gave them both. “I… I think we’d both like that,” he stammered, unused to kindness from anyone but the angel beside him.

Aziraphale nodded and smiled at him encouragingly. “Yes, I dare say we would, dear boy. I’ve been practicing baking; perhaps I’ll make a loaf of soda bread?” he added, looking at Meg.

“Sounds like my kind of dinner party,” the tall brunette grinned and clapped Crowley’s shoulder again. She supposed the snap judgement she had made about the ginger when he barged in was wrong; she decided she kinda liked him, the big softie.

Aziraphale beamed at them and gently squeezed Crowley’s other shoulder again. “I think Helen had a good suggestion, my dear. Shall we go see about that soft blanket and a nap for you?”

Crowley smiled, a little more like himself now. “Yeah, Angel. Let’s go home,” he agreed, standing and stretching out his serpentine spine. Before he could talk himself out of it, Crowley leaned down to hug Meg tightly and then nipped around the table and did the same to Helen, whispering a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to both of them as he did. Straightening up he smiled at both women again and shuffled awkwardly toward the door to make room for Aziraphale to follow him.

Both women were caught off-guard by the hugs but returned them with warm smiles and then stood up to hug Aziraphale good-bye as well. He followed Crowley back out through the shop and closed the door behind them both, surprised but delighted to find Crowley’s hand clasping his as they headed back to the bookshop.

“You know, you didn’t have to Bless them, Crowley; I had already.”

Thinking about the gift the two middle-aged women had given him, whether they realized it or not, Crowley clasped Aziraphale’s hand just a bit tighter and said, “I know you did, Angel, but yeah, I kinda did…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone following along with me on this monster of a story! Your kudos and comments are really what's been keeping me going <3
> 
> I'm so soft for Crowley being a big, soft marshmallow underneath his flash bastard exterior, in case you couldn't tell. LOL
> 
> Also, did y'all catch the Austen reference towards the beginning? ;-)


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